Japan – Day Two:1

Breakfast was a huge buffet with just about everything on offer from salads, both fruit and vegetable; rice, sago, noodles and taro dishes: to carbonara and brocolli. I’m usually an adventurous eater and will try almost anything, but it was really good to have something familiar for breakfast, so I went for the sausages, egg and bacon, with a little bit of rice seasoning.

And I would have loved to try

a beverage from the Beauty Bar, which promised to be “Your Partner for Inner Beauty and Health from Within”, but it was a Nestlé product, and I have not knowingly had any Nestlé product for nearly 20 years because of the company’s terrible unethical practices all over the world.

After breakfast our coach left at 9am. A photo taken from the window of the coach, showing the glorious blue sky and an example of the telegraph poles which were usually festooned with many more cables than this – tangling their way across Japan as all electrical cables are above ground due to the frequency of earthquakes.

Yuka, our lovely guide got us to the Meiji Shinto Shrine before the main crowds descended, this being a special holiday.

She told us all sorts of fascinating facts about the shrine, which I held in my head at the time of the visit then – ‘poof’! They disappear!

It was a wonderfully warm, sunny day and the weather remained unusually warm for November in Japan for the whole two weeks we were there, with temperatures staying up in the 20s.

To get to the Shrine we walked along an avenue of Chrysanthemum displays, with some amazing exhibits

I didn’t know you could Bonsai flower plants

I would have loved to have been able to stop and get better photos

they were fascinating…..

intriguing…… surprising ……… beautiful………

and with more time I would have liked to ‘chat’ to the exhibitors and find out more about them

but on – ON!

there was more to see and I needed to keep up with the group….. (a bit of a recurring theme as it turned out!)

The Chrysanthemum is the flower of November in Japan, with many festivals happening all over the country. The plant first came to Japan from China as a medicinal plant offering special powers of health and longevity. The scent as we walked along this row of displays was subtle and strong at the same time, just perfect on a crisp sunny morning……

Joining in with Cee’s Flower of the Day